Digital kick-off
February 26, 2021 marks the 136th anniversary of the end of the historic Berlin Africa Conference. On this occasion, the Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City invites you to the start of » Dekoloniale [Re] visions « - a series of think tanks and idea laboratories that will take place quarterly and in which we will discuss the possible roles of (de-)central want to think about and discuss monuments, places of remembrance, documentation, learning and/or remembrance for coming to terms with colonial injustice. In Berlin, such a place or places should be created - what kind of place(s) should it be - where located, how designed and structured, which temporalities, perspectives and activities should be in the foreground?
For more than a decade, Afro-diasporic organizations that have joined together in the Committee for the Erection of an African Memorial in Berlin (KADIB) have been calling for a place of remembrance for the victims at the historic site of the Africa Conference of 1884/85 on Wilhelmstraße created by slavery, human trafficking, colonialism and racial violence. But German colonialism also took place in Asia and Oceania. We want to talk to representatives of the Asian communities about this. What role does colonial dis/remembering play for them? The place is right next to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. What does this spatial proximity mean for us and what for the Jewish communities in Berlin?
The think tanks will include various discussion and work formats such as lectures, panels, fish bowls or open spaces in order to ask fundamental questions about the purpose, the addressees and users of monuments and places of remembrance: Which practices are connected with the History of colonialism and what forms of memory result from it? What role can the historical (perpetrator) location play in commemorating victims? What can be derived from experiences with the commemoration of National Socialism, but also from cultures of remembrance in the USA, the Caribbean, southern Africa and other contexts for the Berlin debate about a postcolonial place of remembrance? What is the correct metaphor for the endeavor: The Concentric Circles? The rhizome? The balance between focus and multidirectional memory? It is about the specific and the shared, about elective affinities and solidarity.
